Where Do You Fit on the Engagement Adoption Curve?

In 1962 Everett Rogers came out with a book called Diffusion of Innovations.  In that book he outlined the process he thought governed how new ideas are adopted by a population – specifically consumers.  He also categorized people based on their “adoption” timing.  Geoffrey Moore built on this concept and applied it to businesses in his books Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin (and others - highly recommend them all!) 

Rogers outlined five different adoption categories as follows: 

Innovators	Innovators are the first individuals to adopt an innovation,  take risks, are the youngest, have the highest social class, are very social, have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators.
Early Adopters	This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation and they have the ighest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories, typically younger in age, have advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. They also are more picky with their choice of adoption than the early adopters.
Early Majority	Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters.  They are waiting to see what the early adopters are doing.
Late Majority	Individuals in this category will adopt an innovation after the average member of the society. These individuals approach an innovation with a high degree of skepticism and after the majority of society has adopted the innovation.
Laggards	The last to adopt an innovation, show little to no opinion leadership, have an aversion to change-agent. Laggards typically tend to be focused on “tradition.”

For whatever reason, this idea popped into my head the other day and I started thinking about reward and recognition strategies and how we engage our employees (and channel partners for that matter.)  I realized that companies also fall into an “adoption” curve when it comes to engaging and rewarding/recognizing their employees.  Unfortunately, it’s a skewed curve – and that can be a problem not only for the employee – but for the company as well.

Technology Adoption Curve

The curve Rogers designed included what he thought was the percentage of the population that fell into each category.  He used a “normal distribution and the curve looks like this:

I looked at that curve and asked myself – what strategies and techniques currently being used by companies to engage and drive employee performance would fall into each of the categories?  In other words - which of the techniques being applied are innovative and which are old and tired.  The chart below shows what I quickly came up with (feel free to argue/add to this list in the comments.)

But when I looked at the curve it just didn’t look right.  When I think about the companies I talk to and the conversations I have with industry folks - companies are not following a normal distribution when it comes to adoption of engagement ideas. 

In fact, based on my decidedly unscientific take on the industry, I would suggest that the curve for adoption skews heavily into the late stage adoption groups like the curve below.  The red boxes show the percentage of companies I believe are in each of the categories.  Again – argue/comment below – love to get your feedback.

Why?

Now the big question – why do you think the curve skews so far to late adoption?  My take:

Too much to lose if they are wrong. 

In consumer worlds, trying a bad idea rarely breaks the bank, but in the business world a company that invests a lot in untried and new ideas runs the risk of going out of business.  Espeically in the HR world where either you can’t (or won’t) do some sort of pilot testing to see if the new idea has merit.

No Focus on Employees

Part of me thinks that too many companies just don’t get the idea that people are the new competitive advantage.  They still think great marketing, great products, opaque pricing and asymmetric information is the path to success.  Unfortunately, they forget there is no great product, great marketing, great conversations without people.  And technology has eliminated the whole asymmetric info thing... just google it.

They Aren’t Desperate Yet

Desperation makes people do amazing, scary, unbelievable things (can you say 127 Days?.)  While I don’t think any of the ideas that are “new” are scary – they are amazing – but many companies won’t change ANYTHING until they absolutely have too... and then it will be too late IMHO.

Find Yourself on the Curve

Check out the curve – check out the definitions.  Are you a laggard, early adopter, or a late majority?  Then go ask someone else.  They will tell you the truth. 

Remember – 90% of the people surveyed think they are above average – so does your company – so do you.  But I’m suggesting being average is being behind. 

Look at the left side of the graph – those are the things you should be talking about – not whether you should give Mary Employee of the Month because she hit the time-clock 19 out of 20 days on time.

Comments, ideas, thoughts? 

 

Comments

[Scott Crandall]

Paul --- This is -- in a word, and as usual -- brilliant! In searching for reasons why the rightward shift, I think the center of gravity is (STILL) no focus on employees. Yeah, they talk better games now, but it's just that: talk. Then that "no focus" feeds no sense of desperation -- how can you believe it's a problem, if it doesn't feel important? And both of those feed the first: can't take a chance.

As I told an HR exec last year: "You better hope the economy stays bad, because when it turns you're going to have people exiting like the rats off a ship." There'll be LOTs of sinking ships.

[Paul Hebert]

I agree Scott - until we really believe and behave like employees are the real advantage we (HR and Managers) will continue to placate and pat people on the head and say "good boy, good girl."

That is until - as you say - the economy changes. Then it will be very interesting indeed.

[Wally Bock]

This is a brilliant post, Paul. I loved the way you used research on innovation adoption to take a look at the way companies support engagement. If you are concerned about the state of engagement, this post is a must-read.

That's why I included this post in my weekly selection of top leadership posts from the independent business blogs.

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2011/06/15/61511-a-midweek-look-at-the-independent-business-blogs.aspx

[Danie Vermeulen]

Hi Paul - thanks. Very interesting and relevant.
Important reminder for everyone that we need to recognize and find strategies to deal with this skewed curve.
Your post made me think about the time dimension on your graph as well ... sadly many organizations simply get stuck forever in traditional or some watered down superficial program without understanding that they need to evolve to more mature engagement strategies.
Thanks
Danie Vermeulen
CEO Kaizen Institute NZ